India's Anil Kumble in the first Test against Australia. Photograph: Dibyangshu Sarkar/AFP/Getty Images

Until Anil Kumble joined the club earlier this year, no bowler had taken 100 Test wickets against Australia since a sports-bar owner from Kingston and the destroyer of Perth with the middle names Elconn Lynwall combined to such devastating effect in the 1990s. Kumble is in pretty illustrious company, then, and that might help to explain why there has been so much debate over his form in the days leading up to tomorrow's second Test between India and Australia.

Usually a composed soul with no interest in grandstanding, Kumble has lashed out at his critics in his latest newspaper column, but angry words cannot obscure the fact that many of the concerns are legitimate.

Since claiming 20 wickets in Australia at the turn of the year, Kumble has taken only 12 wickets from six Tests at an average of well over 60, and the wicketless display on home turf last week was only his third in 131 Tests. Worryingly, two of those have come this season. Appalling wicketkeeping and shoddy fielding may have worsened his plight in Sri Lanka, but ultimately he took eight wickets in a series where Ajantha Mendis and Muttiah Muralitharan managed 47.

We can only speculate as to how much the workload has contributed to the decline. Since assuming the captaincy, Kumble has bowled 178.3 overs against Pakistan (three Tests), 181.3 overs in Australia (four Tests), 98 against South Africa (two Tests) and 134.5 in Sri Lanka (three Tests). At the Chinnaswamy Stadium this week, despite the sore shoulder, he gritted his teeth through 51 overs. You get a better insight when you compare his figures to those of Shane Warne, the other great leggie of our age. Though he has played 14 fewer Tests, Kumble has bowled only 140 deliveries less than Warne. And if anything, the onus on him to deliver has only been greater in his second coming (after shoulder surgery in 2001), with Harbhajan Singh unable to reprise his heroics against Steve Waugh's Australians.

These days though, Harbhajan looks the more likely man, and Ricky Ponting has already started the mind games ahead of a match that starts on the day Kumble blows out 38 candles on his birthday cake. It is a brave gambit to rile a man who has 59 Australian wickets at 23.57 from nine Tests on home soil, but it seems fairly obvious that Ponting and his boys view Kumble in the same way that Kevin Pietersen and others looked at the once-magnificent-but-clearly-knackered Jason Gillespie during the Ashes of 2005.

There's no escaping the fact that India do have a selection problem on their hands. The last time India played at Mohali, against England nearly three years ago, Munaf Patel had a revelatory debut, reverse-swinging the ball at pace to spearhead the push for victory. With Zaheer Khan and Ishant Sharma the most impressive Indian bowlers on view in Bangalore, and inclement weather in the Punjab, the temptation to beef up the pace attack with Munaf will be immense.

There's just one problem. Munaf was amazing in that game, but the man of the match award went to another, who took nine for 146 and scored 32 vital runs. Kumble has 36 wickets from seven Tests at the venue, and you can only feel for those that have to choose between the proven-but-perhaps-crocked champion and the young gun with a point or three to prove.

Australia too have bowling worries, with Stuart Clark's elbow injury ruling him out. Victoria's Peter Siddle will make his debut on Friday, though a relatively pace-friendly surface and India's historical frailty against genuinely quick left-arm bowlers (remember Brett Schultz?) might have made it worthwhile to throw Doug Bollinger's cap into the selection ring.

Cameron White probably did enough in Bangalore to keep his place, though the Indian batsmen are unlikely to be as restrained against him at the second time of asking. There are shades of the old Kumble in the way he bowls the top-spinner, though he lacks the variety and accuracy that made the Jumbo of old such a fearsome beast.

Both Michael Clarke and Matthew Hayden, who have stellar Indian feats behind them, failed in Bangalore, and Hayden was out in the middle long after everyone else had departed, engaged in his usual sat-down meditation and shadow-strokeplay. But for an Air Force chopper that flew overhead as he was about to leave the venue, nothing disturbed his concentration.

The media's focus, Kumble's travails apart, is very much on Sachin Tendulkar, now only 15 runs short of Brian Lara's record tally. Nothing lifts Tendulkar's game quite like a tussle against Australia (against whom he has nine centuries) and the solid 49 on the final day of the first Test has at least temporarily quieted those who were clamouring for his exit after a miserable tour of Sri Lanka. In Australia less than a year ago, he scored 494 runs, so it's safe to say that "public sentiment" and "expert opinions" are of as much importance as the President's pitch on the opening day of baseball season.

This is Brett Lee's Indian Premier League home ground (Kings XI Punjab) and it is a sign of the changing times that India now have a pace attack capable of matching anything that Australia put on the field tomorrow. But even if Kumble sits out this game, hold off on those tributes. The third Test starts in Delhi on October 29. Unless the shoulder is a lot worse than we've been told it is, nothing will keep India's greatest match-winner away from the Kotla, the venue where he has 55 wickets from six Tests at the frankly ridiculous average of 15.41.